Page 14: The Secret of Pittsburgh's Success

Mark 3: Animated by Communion and Community

The Secret of Pittsburgh’s Success

By A. Joseph Indelicato

No community may be in communion unless its members are united around a common good. It is the role of the community’s leader to identify that common good, and to order the community’s activity around it. For this reason, Archbishop J. Michael Miller remarks that “[t]he bishop’s leadership is pivotal in lending support and guidance to Catholic schools: ‘only the bishop can set the tone, ensure the priority and effectively present the importance of the cause to the Catholic people.’” [31] No contemporary bishop exemplifies the fulfillment of his episcopal responsibilities better in this regard than Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl.

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl is known nationally for his emphasis on education. Appointed sixth Archbishop of Washington in May 2006 and installed on June 22, Archbishop Wuerl is chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Catechesis and chairman of the board of the National Catholic Educational Association. He was involved in developing the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, published in 2006, and is the author of several books and numerous articles on the Catholic Faith.

As public debate has focused on the quality and financing of education, Archbishop Wuerl has been at the forefront of finding innovative ways to make Catholic education affordable and accessible to all. He is deeply committed to the Archdiocese of Washington’s Center City Consortium in its effort to work with the wider community to sustain inner city parochial schools and bring a high quality, faith-based education to at-risk children. During his 18 years as Bishop of Pittsburgh, he founded The Extra Mile Education Foundation, in cooperation with the business and foundation community, to endow and sustain parochial schools in Pittsburgh’s inner-city. The Crossroads Scholarship Program distributes scholarships to graduates from the Extra Mile schools so they might attend Catholic high schools, while the Bishop’s Education Fund, founded in 1995, has distributed substantial tuition assistance for over 23,000 students.

The results of Bishop Wuerl’s efforts in Pittsburgh are astounding. According to the Terra Nova Achievement Tests in 2005 (for grades two through eight, given to over 19,000 students diocese-wide) and 2004’s Iowa Tests of Educational Development (given to approximately 1,800 Catholic ninth- and tenth-graders), Pittsburgh’s Catholic youth handily outperformed their public school counterparts. Fifth-graders in the Pittsburgh Diocese read at the 10.0 grade level, while fifth-grade public school students tended to read at the 5.7 level. Eighth-graders had impressive reading scores at the 12.9 grade level, compared to the national average of eighth-graders reading at the 8.7 level. Tenth-graders read at the college level, while the national norm was at the sophomore level. Math scores reflected academic superiority as well. The payoff: 97% of graduates from the Diocese continued on to post-secondary education following their 2005 graduations.

[31] John Paul II, Ad limina Address to American Bishops, 28 October 1983, 7.